Brick-and-mortar merchants, or simply “merchants,” that stock physical inventory can incur significant costs to maintain retail locations and pay staff in order to display and promote sales of goods and services. Customers may find the ability to interact with goods and talk with sales staff desirable when making purchasing decisions. However, due to the cost of providing these services to customers, merchants may charge higher prices than other sources such as online retailers. The goods and services, both represented by the term “items,” may include anything that can be offered for purchase, rental, subscription, etc. including tangible items and intangible digital items. Once a customer has identified the particular item he or she wishes to purchase by browsing the items or talking to sales staff at the merchant, the customer may make the purchase from another source such as a discount merchant, an online retailer, etc. This can potentially lead to a situation in which merchants are providing showroom services for online retailers or other lower-cost merchants.
This situation creates a disadvantage for the merchants because they incur the costs of providing valuable services to the customers yet the revenues obtained from making a sale are realized by other entities. The online retailers, and other entities like discount merchants, may appreciate that their own sales will be hurt if the brick-and-mortar merchants are unable to maintain profitable businesses.